Leo Laporte's Comments:
Russell Heistuman
Am I missing something? Aren’t there are already a half-dozen Dashboard widgets that do this?
Dan Lundmark
I like this idea. It’s just innovative and quirky enough to capture the imagination of Mac users. Blossom offers a positive feedback loop that will help users be more productive without coercion. The trick is going to be to make it easy for users to configure their parameters. It has to be simple, yet effective or the whole idea fails. But if you get it working put me down for a copy.
Michael Yuan
Hey, I love to cook, but too many companies have foundered on this iceberg. It’s one of those applications everyone thinks they want, but nobody uses. I do like the TV integration, though. If you could figure out how to turn the recipe into a cooking show I could watch while my order is automatically cooked and delivered to my door, then I might be interested.
Cameron Westland
My initial reaction was, don’t we already have this? but once I saw Kai’s beautiful illustrations I began to warm up to Cameron’s idea. Instead of a window, let’s make this a desktop with a constantly changing weather scene. People love weather apps, and there are already plenty to choose from. Atmosphere needs to do something really different to catch users’ imaginations: a weather enabled desktop works for me.
Richard Whitelock
We demoed a program exactly like this on the Screen Savers five years ago. It worked fine, but it never went anywhere. I don’t see any reason to think the world has changed its mind.
Kevin Capizzi
As someone who posts in several message boards and watches many more, I like this idea, but you’ll never get it working. There are a dozen different popular message board programs, and every installation is slightly different. To make things worse, there’s no standard for message board RSS feeds, either. I’d hate to have to be the developer who has to scrape all the data from these boards, let alone try to keep up with the changes. This is a app that will fail far more often than it will work.
Jeff Greenberg
One of us. One of us. I’m in the cult and I’d kill for a great GTD program on the Mac. I’ve tried every combination that Merlin Mann’s fevered imagination could come up with, and I’m still not satisfied. The idea is great, but it’s all in the implementation. I don’t see anything in Jeff’s blog that makes me think he’s got a handle on how to get this done. This is a program that needs to be written, but the devil’s in the details. Convince me you know how to do this, Jeff, and I’ll add it to my @shopping list.
Farzad Sadjadi
We’ve already got this with dot-mac, and even so, too few application developers support it. You think you can do a better job of corralling software vendors than Apple? You’ve spent way too much time on the eye candy, and way too little on the fundamental challenge of getting this to work at all.
Andrew Wilson
When I’m gaming I want to game. When I’m working I want to work. I don’t need any more distractions on my desktop. And the game itself doesn’t seem particularly compelling. How are you going to compete against Starcraft or Command and Conquer and still keep it on the desktop? This is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup concept - you got your game on my desktop, you got your desktop in my game - but the combination is as unfortunate as liverwurst ice cream.
Leo Laporte
This Week in TechLeo hosts and produces some of the most popular podcasts in the world including this WEEK in TECH, Security Now!, Inside the Net, The Daily Giz Wiz, and FLOSS Weekly under the TWiT.tv banner.